World’s Richest Woman with Poorest PR:

What are the PR rules for the richest woman in the world? Gina Rinehart, who recently topped the list, is an Australian-based heiress whose father started the original family fortune in mining. She inherited the fortune, grew it rapaciously on the back of the long-running commodities boom, and now has pride of place as one of a handful of “self-made women” who get to opine on all matters economic.

Rinehart created a fuss recently when she gave her prescription for creating wealth. Her simple advice? Stop complaining. If you don’t like your current situation, just get back to work. Besides, if you have financial problems, you probably ate and drank your wealth away. Get serious, prescribes the generously proportioned Rinehart, who doesn’t look particularly abstemious herself. Listen to mommy!

She created a news sensation when she told a recent mining conference that mine workers’ salaries in Australia and other advanced economies are too high. Why, in Africa, you can pay people $2 a day! The speech created an internet furore and untold sniping blogs.

The PR Verdict: “F” (Full Fiasco) for Gina Rinehart and her PR image. If she keeps this up, no political allies will see any advantage in being public friends with her.

The PR Takeaway: Giving people a reason to like you makes it easier to enlist them in your cause. Rinehart seems to have a tough time getting along with people; her ugly financial disputes with her children are well documented. Having inherited such a large fortune, it’s hard to take her pronouncements on being self-made seriously. Telling others to take drastic pay cuts or accept a lower standard of living is guaranteed to backfire. Speaking your mind is one thing, but to drive a public policy agenda, Rinehart might find it more productive to be in listening, rather than telling, mode. The choice is clear: She can be a successful entrepreneur or the Cruella de Vil of capitalism.

What is Your PR Verdict?

Fascinating to read this. Interesting too that the world’s two richest men – Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are both truly self made people, who both have taken their great good fortune and are spreading it generously. And, we’ve never heard of their children fighting with them over anything.

Working the top peak of the 1%ers, I find that ginormously rich people fall into two categories (like all other economic levels). Those who use their money in the economic M theory – money is like manure, the more you use and spread it, the more everything grows. Then the other crowd who are simply into self-aggrandizement and want bigger and more of everything with no idea of how wealth can be shared. Rineheart needs more than great PR, she needs a heart and some soul. Still, the one guarantee in all of this, eventually God will send the debt collector and she owes soooooooooo much. And then we die, and all the money she’s accumulated in this life will be gone. And, judging by the way she looks (thank God she’s wealthy), she’s not had a particularly happy life – she has no laugh lines!

I think Gina should give up her credit cards and chequebook for one year and live on a miner’s salary. Or, even better, live on the $2 per day she feels is more than enough pay for someone down the mines at least 12 hours per day. And, she definitely must work down in the mines: no complaining, just get back to work!